No More Enemies
by Chanlin Marr
Summary: Where do you rise to, after the fall?
1. Default Chapter

**No More Enemies**  
A continuation from the end of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

By  
Chanlin Marr

They were all dead.

Vinnie. Vladimir. Woden.

Mona.

I lean down to her once more, kissing quickly cooling lips. A late goodbye. The only one I had.

The cops swarm around me like blue hornets, all the surrounding the destruction and blood not letting them take any chances. They order me down with barked words and strong arms, and there's nothing left in me to resist. My cheek hugs the floor, and I never stop looking at Mona, her profile a perfect mountain range of purest white amongst all the darkness of this world.

She's so beautiful.

It hurts to look at her.

I shut my eyes.

I'm being grilled like a cheap hamburger back at the precinct. Bravura stands in the corner of the interrogation room, silent, his eyes acting as judge and jury. I don't recognize the cop applying the heat to me. There are threats of prison, death row, and more bad coffee as the hours tick away. And through it all I say nothing, my mind still having one foot in this reality, and the other in memory.

_Her eyes…_

Finally, eons later, the cop, who I discover is appropriately named Burnside, asks me something I can answer:

"What do you have to say for yourself?!"

I take a breath, and then unravel the entire tale. I tell of Woden's Inner Circle, Nicole Horne and Valkyr. I connect the dots to Vinnie, to Vlad, to Winterson. I tell them where they can find the phone calls, the tapes, the documents. I tell it all.

And then I tell them of Mona, or try to. Some of the words emerge, but they threaten to invite tears along for the ride, and I stop short. Everything has stopped.

Burnside leaves, a notepad full of scribbles he has to verify clutched in his furious hand. And then it's just me and Bravura. His eyes have gone from executioner's cool to swing-vote uncertainty. The part about Winterson and Vlad must have struck a chord or two, memories of Winterson's clandestine phone calls, and Cop-house jokes about a mysterious boyfriend. Maybe he didn't have all the pieces yet, but he would soon enough.

"I hope to god you're making all that bullshit up, Payne," he says finally. A cough, a sigh. The aura of doubt brightens around him, but I don't care. I just stare down at my hands: calloused, and stained with blood and burnt cordite. War wounds.

_Her voice…_

I'm on the wrong side of a cell door, spread out on the torture device the precinct calls a bed. Ancient springs burst up from the mattress, stabbing into my back. There are one hundred and forty-four cracks in the ceiling.

I'm home again, and if it is a dream I can't tell. I'm on the couch with my wife, sitting before a roaring fire. I look down at her, and Michele smiles up at me. I turn to the flames. The heat rises, and my face feels like it's burning. And then the fire takes shape, and it's Vlad, smiling a demon's grin and raising a gun. I look down at my love, and Mona smiles up at me, but her skin begins to run like melted wax, and soon all that remains is the bare, lifeless skull, still grinning at me, beckoning me to follow.

I scream, and the echoes rattle through the bars of my prison, the only part of me with a hope of escape.

_(To be continued as the urge strikes me. – CM)_


	2. Part 1

**Part 1: It's not the waking up that kills the dream**

Consciousness kisses me like a brick to the face. Bloodshot eyes crack open to the cold warmth of fluorescent lighting and nausea. It's morning. I think.

I stare at the dingy yellow paint that covers the ceiling, and the images just won't stop playing: screams, blood, the bodies.

Michele's body.

The baby's body.

Mona's body.

All the flesh of fallen angels.

I sit up, feet flat on the floor. My shoelaces are missing, and so is my belt. If they really thought I wanted that sort of exit, I had more than enough bullets with me yesterday. The fact that I was still breathing should have given them a clue.

I stand, my muscles complaining from the movement, and I stare across the cell at the small plate of bolted-down steel that masquerades as a real mirror. My face is a muted, dull and distorted reflection of reality. I can't disagree.

The days slip by quickly.

In the end, after the gathering of the evidence, an interview with Winterson's son, and a search of Vlad's office at VODKA, the Brass tentatively drop hints that the cop-killing may have been justified, and that the subsequent series of misfortunes fall beneath the security blanket of self-defense.

Eventually, though placed on administrative suspension, I'm released on my own recognizance. Released…

But never free.

If Michele and the baby were the family of my American Dream, Vinnie, Vlad, Woden and Mona were the family of my American Nightmare. And now both were gone, and I was orphaned, abandoned.

Where does the warrior go, when love is gone and there are no more enemies to fight?

I cut through the web of police tape the cordons off the cinder that was once my apartment. I look around numbly, scanning for anything I can salvage, hoping the answer is yes while thankful it might be no. Maybe this is where the past should die, the shards of my former life finally burned away.

I see Michele. I see myself. The edges around the image are scarred by fire and other people's revenge. But she's still there, and we're still smiling. I stoop to grab the photo from the floor, turn, and leave the rest behind.

I hang up the phone with Bravura, finishing my daily check-in. Between now and the review board hearing on Winterson's death I might not be in a cell, but not having anywhere to go and having to report in all the time, I might as well be in prison.

The window of my very temporary apartment looks out onto a brick wall, and I am entombed. Questions and rage roil their way through my mind:

Where do I go from here?

What's left to fight for?

Why?

Why?!

WHY?!

I bang my skull against the wall to punctuate each unanswerable question, gritting my teeth at the pain, stepping back, dizzy. I down some pills for it.

Old habit. Hardly dying.

And for a moment I can't tell if the ringing is in my head or from the phone, but just to be safe, I lift both.

"Yeah?"

"Max Payne?"

"Well, I never take it in _small_ doses…"

"Mr. Payne, my name is Benjamin Doubleday. I represent the estate of Senator Alfred Woden."

Lawyers. I hate lawyers.

"Yeah? There wasn't much of an estate left the last time I saw it. You want to haul me in front of a judge? Take a number."

"You misunderstand the reason for my call, Mr. Payne. I have no instructions to sue you, nor take any, well, _negative_ actions against you."

"Fine. Think positive then. Spill it."

"Well, to be perfectly blunt, I have been designated the executor of Mr. Woden's estate. And you, Mr. Payne, have been named as one of his beneficiaries."

The concept takes a minute to sink in, and once it does the old paranoia returns: riddles within conspiracies within ambushes, Woden's feeble hand reaching from the grave to pull me back in. Just when I thought, prayed, all of it had gone up in smoke.

I look again out the window, my gaze boring into the brick wall of where I'm headed. Fate has signaled a detour. What have I got to lose?

Nothing. My words are sighs.

"When and where?"

_(Next to follow soon… -CM)_


	3. Part 2

**Part 2: Executioner's Song**

I sit in the car, the sounds of the outside world muffled and numb. It looks different in the daylight, almost noble. It fits its former owner: Senator by day, conspiratorial slime by night. The light blinded the onlooker from the underlying darkness.

The mansion looked about as I had left it, though the blood had been washed away, and shattered windows covered with transparent plastic. Remnants of police tape still cling to the wrought iron gate, the yellow stripes crisscrossing the black bars and making me think of hornets and pain.

I expect a trap.

I can't find a reason to care.

Walking up the main path, flashbacks of Cleaners and gunshots appear with every footstep. I shake them away. The only residents now are three expensive cars sitting in the driveway. One has a plate reading _N.Y. Law_ and something inside me twists slightly along with my mouth.

Lawyers. I hate lawyers.

I stop and listen to the calming silence that only money can buy in a world of violence and strife. I look at the door to the place and a familiar itch resurfaces on my trigger finger. The door opens. A serpent's smile.

"Ah, Mr. Payne."

"Doubleday." It's not a question. The used car salesman scent reeks from the guy like a quart of cheap cologne, and there was something behind the eyes that told me that his personality was just as flammable. But for the time being he was all handshakes and grins and it's all meaningless to me.

He leads me through the mansion, giving the dime tour while extolling the virtues of its deceased owner, as if I was some rube homebuyer looking to take on a fixer-upper. I think to shut him up with a glare but the old instincts are kicking in, and I tune him out, checking the corners and sniper positions I'm already familiar with.

There is never a way out.

We go through a door not riddled with bullet holes and into a study. Cherrywood desk, and three chairs in front of it. Two are filled: a man, a woman; she older and draped in black, distraught, he younger and in gray and looking bored. The loving family. They turn as we enter.

She stops sobbing.

He stops looking bored.

They both sneer at me.

It's always good when a family can find common ground.

Doubleday motions for me to sit, and I shrug, ending up next to the Lady in Black. The only sound in the room is the lawyer's split-lipped grin tightening around too-white teeth. He sits.

"Well now. Mr. Payne, let me introduce Mr. Woden's surviving relatives. This is Mrs. Valerie Woden, Alfred's sister, and Mr. Lawrence Woden," Doubleday pauses for effect, "Alfred's son."

The tension rises but I'm stone. I nod to the kid and he nods back like accepting some challenge I didn't give him. I just glance back. A gauntlet's been tossed but I'm not sure by who or why. Doubleday takes back our attention by clearing his throat.

"Ahem. Well then. As you all know, pursuant to Mr. Woden's wishes, you have all been named as beneficiaries to his estate. The instructions I was left with will begin first with a reading of the relevant section of the Will. I have copies of the full document for each of you upon the conclusion-"

"Just get on with it!" the kid snaps. Snotty accent. Probably got his Pampers wet coming across the water from Oxford or something. Doubleday looks like he's been slapped in the middle of a pick-up line.

"Mr. Woden, your father left strict instructions regarding this procedure, and I will see them met. In another moment, you will have the information regarding the distribution of his estate."

The kid folds his arms, dejected and impatient like the brat he is. Beside him, the sister just looks sad.

"Now then. The Will." The Lawyer opens a file folder and reads the thing in a voice that reminds me of a church sermon. "Being of sound mind, I, Alfred J. Woden do hereby bequeath the particulars of my estate as follows: to my beloved sister, Valerie, I leave all the collected artwork stored within the private vault in Paris, France; ownership of all jewels in the Woden family collection; and the sum of $500,000."

The Sister bursts into tears, sadness or happiness I can't tell. The Son is tapping his foot and looking angry.

"To my son, Lawrence, I leave my private collection of vintage automobiles; the summer house in the Hamptons; my private yacht; and the sum of $500,000."

To say that the kid went into shock would be an understatement. Someone must have hit the "repeat" button, because all he can mumble is "But…but…but…." But…he's cut off when the Lawyer goes on, and then it's everyone's turn to gape. Including me.

"And finally, to Detective Max Payne, I leave the entirety of the Woden Mansion: all associated properties, and all contents therein."

Save for Doubleday, who was getting his commission regardless, I wasn't sure whose jaw hit the floor the hardest, but it was followed by the Son raging, the Sister practically screaming, and the Lawyer looking oddly pleased.

As for me, I felt like I was looking down the barrel of a gun.


	4. Part 3

**House of Payne**

I stand outside, a light rain falling like reluctant tears. The three cars had peeled off an hour ago: one content, one crying, one enraged. It was that last one I kept thinking about; a young man having lost all he thought was owed to him.

Reminded me of someone.

I stand outside, letting the chill of the air and the moisture seep into the cracks of my skin, until I'm consumed in cold. The sensation was an abstract: acknowledged but ignored.

I couldn't move, because there wasn't anywhere for me to go.

After a while, I turn my head, looking at what I was left with:

A battle-scarred palace. A monument to success, greed, and death.

Be it ever so humble…

I stand inside, drops of rain darkening the red carpet worn thin by running feet and gurney wheels. I pass my eyes around my inherited kingdom; my castle a storehouse of memories and questions. Every ten feet was someone's final resting place, put there by me.

I have only one grave worth visiting.

I stand where she fell, the blood stain darkening the red carpet where her head had laid. I inhale deeply the air that had carried her final breath. Already I question whether I'm remembering her face the way it really was.

In my mind I see her picture, curling at the edges from the flames that surround it. She smiles at me, and it's forever, but the image begins to bubble and split.

It all gets taken away, no matter how hard you hold onto it.

I stand in a private study, one I hadn't found during my last visit. Bookshelves line the walls, a thousands spines proclaiming their names to me. And between two sets of shelves, a display case: cherry wood and glass. A store window. Selling firearms.

I smash the pane with my fist, releasing the instruments of death from their confines. I grab one; feel its weight in my hand. I raise it.

I stand in my tomb, gifted to me by my enemy, a gun to my head and the single question I've had no answer to since the day my wife and child died ringing in my head, but this time with one

extra

syllable:

"Why _not?_"

I place my finger on the trigger.

(More…eventually. God I love a cliffhanger. – CM) 


	5. Part 4

**Reason to be**

Time coats itself in ice. The muzzle is tight against my temple, pressing a ring of salvation closer to my brain. The cliché comes true, and all my memories cycle through the darkness behind my eyelids in a silent slideshow.

I watch it all, the shadows _and_ the light; flickering images of joy and pain. I savor each like bites of a last meal. The cycle comes closer to the present, and all that led me here.

To this room.

To this choice.

"It's still a choice," I hear a voice say. It's my own.

The muzzle at my head: a ring of salvation, or one of surrender? Had I fought this long only to do to myself what so many others tried to do?

Why not?

Why _not?!_ My finger tightens.

Like a bad movie, on cue, the phone rings. I grit my teeth.

Another ring.

It's an excuse.

I lower the muzzle. I raise the receiver.

"Congratulations. You're a life saver."

"Max Payne? Benjamin Doubleday again. I'm sorry, my cell cut out. What did you say?"

Lawyers. They're not supposed to keep screwing you until _after_ you're dead.

"Nothing. I'm listening."

"Yes, well. I withheld the last details of Senator Woden's will. Considering his son's reactions…well, you can understand."

"Mm hmm."

"Yes…well, pursuant to Senator Woden's wishes, there is a sealed package in the desk of the study where we met. It is yours to open. Even I am not aware of the contents. And that, Mr. Payne, concludes my involvement. I do wish you well."

I can't come up with anything to say. I cradle the phone. I nurse the gun at my side.

The study. At least I have somewhere to go. It's a start.

I weave through the halls in a daze of apathy. No feeling, just the rote reaction of somewhere to go, something to do.

I'm back in the study, and walk around behind the desk. For the first time I notice that the cherry wood, just like so much of Woden's life, is a façade: dull metal makes up the desk drawer, titanium I think, and where there would be a keyhole, just a black plastic pad with a thumb-sized oval at its center.

I meet it with my opposable digit. It was a good match: the drawer pops open with a click.

Inside, a small manila folder. Inside, a recordable DVD. And through the looking glass, I follow its written command: PLAY ME.

The television in the nearby cabinet ignites into a black screen. Slowly Woden fades into view, sitting behind that same desk, looking like an anchorman about to report on the day's misery.

"Max Payne," his voice is weak, meaning this is recent. "If you are watching this, than I am most likely dead and, hopefully, so are those that did me in." The tone of his voice has a retroactive omniscience: he knew his time was coming, and he knew I would be at the center of it. Ice water begins to trickle down my spine. Woden then began his monologue. That's when everything changed.

"Whether you know it or not, Mr. Payne, I have been one of your staunchest allies ever since the night your family was murdered; ever since you started down this dark road. And though you may rightly point to me as the base cause of that tragedy, I have, in my way, attempted to atone for it in the years since.

"And that is what I need to speak to you about, Mr. Payne. About purpose. About fate. About destiny. Though you may abhor my methods, the bulk of my adult life has been aimed towards one goal: to make a difference."

Doubleday had been wrong. _This_ was Woden's Will, and his last testament. Whether it made any sense, I wasn't sure, but there was something in his voice, and in the way that one eye gleamed that told me that, for probably the first time in a long time, he was speaking without the cover of deception.

Truth. From the Devil himself. Words to be trusted, or feared all the more? He kept right on talking.

"What separates an ordinary man from a legend? The possession of an ideal, and the strength to adhere to, and achieve, that ideal. Mine was to make the world safer, and I allowed nothing to obstruct that goal. Neither man, law or, unfortunately, morality. Someone has to make the sacrifices necessary, so that great things can be realized.

"And so here you are, Mr. Payne. If you are still standing, then all your foes are fallen. Since that dark night, your one driving ideal has been revenge. And if what will happen is what I believe, than you will have achieved that for the second time."

Then he asked the question, the same one that kept the gun heavy in my hand.

"So, now what? What is left for the warrior when there are no more enemies? In Norse mythology, warriors who fell in battle traveled to Valhalla, where they would fight all day in glory, and their wounds would heal, ready to fight again the next day. But where do you go, Mr. Payne? What does the avenger do in a time of peace?

"I do not have that answer for you. But I have a means by which you can find it for yourself. You've had your revenge, Mr. Payne, now you must choose to either make a difference, or lie down and die. You have no other paths left open to you."

My eyes lowered, like being scolded by a strict father. Woden's electronic ghost had cut through the grey haze, turning my world into two landscapes: black and white:

The gun in my hand.

Woden's words promising an answer.

"It is time for you to discover your purpose, Mr. Payne. One beyond the function you have served as executioner. And as my final act, I mean to provide you the means to do so. In my years as a member of the Inner Circle, I have, as you may have noticed, acquired vast resources with which to make the changes I deemed necessary to the world around me. A goodly sum of those resources I have hidden. And, on the off chance that ears other than yours, Mr. Payne, are listening to this recording, I'll simply say this to get you started on your new path: the place of my _sweet indiscretions._ Goodbye, Max Payne."

The video clicked off. The room was now darker than when I had come in, and the gun felt even heavier.

So I dropped it.

(more…eventually… - CM) 


	6. Part 5

**When the snipe aren't in season**  
By  
Chanlin Marr

No matter how hard you try to bury the past, it always rests in a shallow grave. Woden had handed me the shovel, and I had exhumed the darkness.

Driving downtown at sunset was an exit from quiet opulence and back to more familiar battlegrounds. Concrete and wrought iron replaced oak trees and polished brass. It felt like I had woken from some kind of brief, disturbing dream.

The Senator's "sweet indiscretions" was a clue as thinly veiled as Candy's underwear had been. Somewhere in safety deposit box, I had a VHS witness to the Senator's recreational activities. I had kept it as a last ditch shield against the unseen sword of Woden's power and influence. Now it was just an X-rated trinket of a dark life, gathering dust.

The Finito Brother's Hotel was right where I had left it, and had remained just as pretty: a broken-down shell; a former drug den and brothel where hookers like Candy had plied their wares to the low, the desperate, and the corrupt.

Getting into the place was ten minutes of pulling hastily hammered slats of wood from a side entrance, the doorframe moaning with each extracted nail; steel bullets meant to kill an unwanted urban monster. I clicked on a flashlight, and then it was memories again.

Chalk outline white and old blood brown still stained the carpet in the places where I had cleaned out the roaches from this hotel. Everywhere my circle of light touched brought back flashes of gunfire and death screams. But it was all very old news; yesterday's headlines on time-worn paper, reading as quaint compared to everything that had happened since.

_Mona…_

It took the better part of an hour to fight through the rubble and rotting staircases. My shoulder had said hello to more than one old door, and I could feel the bruises blossoming. But I finally found it. Candy's room.

Her diary was still there on the desk, which was odd. If the thing hadn't made it into evidence, then some cop would have at least grabbed it for some late night one-handed reading. But from the weak light I could give the room, it didn't look like the place had been touched since that night.

Had Woden put his invisible shield around this place all these years?

On the chance it had something useful, I slid the diary between my belt and my spine. Then I flipped my Detective switch to "on" and searched the place, wary of any surprises, like Muerte's shotgun had been. The desk was empty, save some bone-dry makeup and boxes of expired condoms. And the room wasn't much for other furnishings.

I sighed.

I turned.

Had to be the bed.

Nothing lay between the crusty mattress and the boxspring except dead roaches and stains I didn't want to think about too deeply. I took out a utility knife, and made like a slasher movie. I tried not to think about how many Johns the thing had played cushion to as I cut up the old whore.

I ended up with a sore arm from the cutting and ripping, a pile of dusty bed fluff, and my prize: an unmarked cassette tape. At least it wasn't an 8-Track.

"Goosechase."

The words had barely left my lips when something that sounded a lot like a footstep trying really hard not to sound like a footstep hit my ears. My hand went for a gun that I didn't have, so instead I gripped the knife a little tighter and stepped quietly, putting myself between the closet and the doorway, waiting.

The crack to the back of my head punched the memory home that the was no closet, just a hidden door to the camera room. My face hit the floor, and from that angle I was oddly impressed with the rug's topography.

A voice warbled its way through my darkening consciousness.

"Thanks for doing the legwork, Max…"

Then I was out cold.

I had been here before.

(Yeah…it's been a long time. More…eventually… - CM)


End file.
